Teasing: for superiority or solidarity?

Humor among friends is typically regarded as a means of strengthening friendships. However, there may be a side of humor that is used to compete rather than bond (R. D.

Puns and near puns in fables.

In previous research, (L. G. Lippman, K.

Constructing something funny: levels of associative connection in Tom Swifties.

In the present study, redundancy (low, medium, or high association between the adverb and sentence content) and contextual connection (presence vs. absence of a meaning-based connection between the adverb and other information in the sentence) were manipulated systematically in Tom Swifties (single-sentence wordplays in which a pun is based on the adverb at the end of the sentence). Sixty-nine university students provided ratings of each Swifty's humorousness, cleverness, and coherence and of their reactions to each (tendency to smile, laugh, and groan).

Contextual connections to puns in Tom Swifties.

Previous research conducted with short fables was replicated in this study with Swifties in which sentence length and presence of a pun were controlled. Of the 24 one-sentence word plays shown to each participant, half had an enhanced contextual connection that was predicted to increase appropriateness and detection of the incongruity, resulting in heightened perceived cleverness and humor. Results supported predictions, showing especially strong enhancement of perceived cleverness.

Perceived attributes of health-promoting laughter: a cross-generational comparison.

A small but growing body of empirical data support the popular belief that laughter benefits health. However, there are many varieties of laughter and no reason to assume all varieties should be, or would be, perceived as equally beneficial. The authors examined which types of laughter and which characteristics of laughter people associate with health and whether there are generational differences in this perception.

Mental Practice and Memorization of Piano Music.

Piano performance majors attempted to play short, unfamiliar selections from memory after practicing for 10 min by playing the score, visually inspecting it, or listening to a recorded rendition while examining the score. When practicing mentally, subjects were encouraged to make use of visual, acoustic, and kinesthetic imagery. Independent experts rated performance on four dimensions that were intended to reflect the musicality as well as the accuracy of the performances.

Perceptual Isolation and List Difficulty in Serial Learning.

Experiment I, in which learning occurred by the anticipation method, showed that the magnitude of the isolation effect and use of the isolating stimulus as a cue were inversely related to list association value (AV), extending the generality of prior findings. In order to provide a more direct test of item differentiation, response-learning requirements were minimized through the use of a reconstruction procedure in Experiment II; isolation effects in this study showed no dependency upon AV. The apparent contingency on response-learning requirements was discussed; results of similar studies, in which item differentiation had been dealt with more directly as intralist similarity, were also considered.